Employees of a modern organization often deal with various documents concerning significant business aspects of the organization. These documents may include data on customers (or patients), contracts, deliveries, supplies, employees, manufacturing, or the like. Existing security techniques typically monitor handling of document data in digital form by employees to prevent loss of sensitive information. Document data in digital form may include data stored in databases or repositories, data transferred in electronic messages (e.g., email and text messages), data copied to hard drives or compact discs, and the like.
Documents handled by employees of an organization are not limited to digital data and include a large number of physical (paper) documents. Devices that handle physical documents include, for example, printers, scan machines, fax machines, and copy machines. Over the last decade, these devices have become increasingly connected, controlled, and audited. In modern organizations, many of these devices are now full-blown IT devices with network and email connectivity. Often, they run embedded operating systems (e.g., Windows Embedded XP of Microsoft® Corporation) and include storage devices such as hard drives. These storage devices can provide a trivial means for attackers to circumvent otherwise strongly controlled environments. In addition, existing data leakage controls can be evaded by using paper documents produced by printers, copiers and fax machines.